En los ensayos que forman la primera parte de este libro, Tom Wolfe realiza un provocativo analisis de un fenomeno que convulsiono el panorama literario norteamericano: la aparicion del llamado Nuevo Periodismo, que segun el autor arrebata el centro a la esterilizada y agonizante Novela y se convierte en el genero literario mas rico de la epoca. La antologia de textos de Rex Reed, Terry Southern, Nicholas Tomalin, Barbara L. Goldsmith, Norman Mailer, Joe McGinnis, John Gregory Dunne y el propio Tom Wolfe, en la segunda parte del libro, ilustra esplendidamente las tesis del autor. / The hell with it ...let chaos reign ...louder music, more wine ...All the old traditions are exhausted and no new one is yet established. All bets are off! The odds are cancelled! It's anybody's ballgame ...' Tom Wolfe introduces and exults in his generation's journalistic talent: Truman Capote inside the mind of a psychotic killer Hunter S. Thompson skunk drunk at the Kentucky Derby Michael Herr dispatching reality from the Vietnam killing fields Rex Reed giving the star treatment to the ageing Ava Gardner As well as Norman Mailer Joe Eszterhas Terry Southern Nicholas Tomalin George Plimpton James Mills Gay Talese Joan Didion and many other legends of tape and typewriter telling it like it is from Warhol's Factory to the White House lawn, from the saddle of a Harley to the toughest football team in the US.